Re: Lenin's NEP & Paul Phillips on Yugoslavia

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Just a clarification  -  I have no opinion of my own on the Yugo/NEP
question. I have no idea what's going on there. I just ran the assertion
past Sean Gervasi, who said it was nonsense. That's why I asked for
clarification.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)


On Sun, 3 Jul 1994 NOHARAPA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>
> Dear PKTers, James Galbraith,Jim Devine,Doug Henwood,Paul Phillips,etc.
>
> In relation to the discussion of Yugoslavia's decline in the inflation rate
> and the New Economic Policy and whether that influenced the low inflation
> rate. Obviously there are different views on this. I'd like the debate to
> continue between Paul Phillips and Doug Henwood and others as to whether
> the NEP had an influence and how exactly the inflation rate dropped so
> quickly. Also, in the current instabilities, what constitutes Yugoslavia
> anyway?
>
> As to the questions I raised, I'll try and be brief. As James and Jim pointed
> out, I (consciously) left out Eugene Preobrazhensky as one of the 3 greatest
> Soviet or Russian economists of the 1920s. A theory based on wiping out
> vast sections of the peasant class (middle to upper peasants), paraded as
> an analysis of "primitive socialist accumulation", is hardly good economics.
> I belief this, despite the spirit of Keynes, Schumpeter and Kalecki in his
> works as James speculates. In fact, the so-called "left wing" of the
> communist party (Trotsky, Preobrazhensky, etc) seem to me to be "right wing
> social fascists" with their policies of totalitarianism, party control,
> and the terror of speeding up industrialisation at the expense of forgetting
> (or not knowing?) Marx's humanistic spirit of workplace democracy and
> reducing alienation; not to mention other aspects. The so-called "workers
> opposition" ("ultra left-wing?") which wanted workers cooperatives, election
> of government officials/managers, and a decline in control by the party
> bureaucracy, seems much more to my liking. (The fact that Stalin more or
> less put into place the Trotsky policies of speeding industrialisation,
> with the well known consequences, speaks much for the left's policies.)
>
> As to Jim's question of whether the New Economic Policy included "(f)
> encouragement of alternative cultural foundations", which I suggested, I'll
> present a little bit of documentation. (You may be right about h and maybe j.)
>
> 1. Quotes from Stephen F Cohen: Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution.
> "[A] considerable degree of nonpolitical freedom remained. Economically,
> intellectually, and culturally, NEP Russia became a relatively pluralistic
> society."
> "The new economic policies, known collectively as NEP, and the social order
> to which they gave rise, "NEP Russia", as Lenin dubbed it, lasted seven
> years, until the onset of Stalin's "great change" in 1928-9" (p.123; other
> quote:p.125). So we might differentiate between the NEP policies and the
> social order or social policies associated with NEP.
>
> 2. Quote from Alfred Meyer, Communism (3rd Ed), p. 74:
> "The NEP meant a relaxation of bolshevik terror [after the civil war and
> war communism of 1917-1921]. Members of the old ruling classes remained
> disenfranchised and discriminated against; but they were at least permitted to make a living. ... Bold experiments were still conducted by the party in various
> cultural fields; but other currents in arts, literature, science, and mores
> were at least tolerated. To the average Soviet citizen looking back to this
> period in the 1930s and 1940s, the years of the NEP must have appeared like a
> veritable golden age. After the hardships of the heroic period, normalcy
> seemed to have returned."
>
> And the NEP (Bukharin's "baby") was also based on the assumption that "the
> essence of capitalism ... was "capitalist property", not market relations
> alone" (Cohen p.139).
>
> If only Stalin's dictatorship had not killed the NEP supporters in 1928-30
> and again in 1936-38 when it was revived in spirit (it might also have
> emerged in spirit in the 1960s had the forces of reaction set in again.
> But were the Yugoslav policies when reduced inflation influenced by NEP? ...
>
> cheers
>
> Phil O'Hara, Econ, Curtin Univ, Perth 6001 Auustralia
>